Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [867]
“Yeah,” he managed after a moment. “Better than I have a right to be.”
“Me, too,” she said, her smile evident in the drowsy contentment of her voice as it fanned warm and light over the top of his forearm. “In case you’re wondering, my pilot services usually don’t include getting naked with my clients.”
“Good,” Kade said, little better than a growl as he gathered her closer to the front of his still-heated body. He didn’t want her getting naked with anyone, he realized with a jolt. He wouldn’t have liked the idea before what just happened between them today, and he sure as hell wouldn’t take it well now.
“What about you?” she asked as he covered them both with the blankets to shield his glyphs from her view.
“What about me?”
“Do you … do this often?”
“Get naked with sexy Alaskan bush pilots in the middle of the frozen wilderness?” He paused for a minute, letting her think he was giving the question serious consideration. “Nope. This was a first for me.”
And so was the fierce sense of possession that still drummed in his blood when he thought of Alex being with any other male. He wondered idly if it was the fact that she was a Breedmate that had drawn him to her from the first. But even as he thought it, he knew that the birthmark that connected her to the shadowy world he inhabited as one of the Breed was the least of the qualities that attracted him to Alexandra Maguire. The last thing he needed right now was an emotional entanglement, least of all with a female bearing the teardrop-and-crescent-moon mark.
But he was entangled. In fact, he had just tied a few more knots in an already impossible situation.
Cursing himself for the first-class fool he clearly was, Kade kissed the top of her head and gathered her close as he waited for his eyes to resume a normal appearance and his fangs to have a chance to retreat.
It took some time, and even after his body settled into a comfortable peace, his hunger for the woman in his arms remained.
CHAPTER
Fifteen
Daylight broke thin and overcast outside the wide mouth of the woodland cave. The predator had sought shelter there a short while ago, when the sun’s first weak rays had begun to claw their way through the winter darkness. Few things existed that were stronger than he, particularly in this primitive world that was so different from the distant one he’d been born into many millennia ago, but as advanced a life-form as his kind was, his hairless, dermaglyph-covered skin could not process ultraviolet light, and just a few minutes’ exposure would kill him.
From deep within the safety of the dark cave, he rested from the previous night of hunting and wandering, impatient for the thready light of daybreak to exhaust itself and retreat once more. He needed to feed again soon. He still hungered, his cells and organs and muscles requiring extensive rejuvenation after the long period of deprivation and abuse he had suffered while in captivity. The instinct to survive warred with the knowledge he had that he was, wholly and utterly, alone on this inhospitable chunk of orbiting debris.
There were none like him left here now, not for a long time. He was the last of the eight explorers who had crashed on this planet, a lone castaway with no chance of escape.
They had been born to conquer, born to be kings. Instead, one by one, his stranded brethren had all perished, whether by the harshness of their new surroundings or in war with their own half-human progeny centuries later. Through treachery and a secret bargain with his offspring, he alone had survived. But it had been that same treachery and covert dealing that had enslaved him to the son of his son, Dragos.
Now that he was free, the only thing more attractive than ending his time on this forsaken planet was the idea that he might be able to take his duplicitous heir with him in death.
He howled with remembered fury for the long decades of pain and experimentation that had been inflicted on him. His voice shook the walls of